State of the 2025 USA Cycling Union

WorldTour representation continues to decrease while results & individual rider quality increase

As the 2025 professional road cycling season prepares to kick off with the upcoming Tour Down Under (Jan 21-26), it's the perfect time to assess the state of American cycling at the sport’s highest level.

In line with the recent steady decline in the number of U.S. riders in the WorldTour, heading into 2025, the total number of American riders in the WorldTour has dropped to a nearly two-decade low of 12. However, the quality of their performance tells a different story, with a rising performance level propelling wins and PCS points per rider to levels rarely seen over the last 15 years.

American WorldTour Long-Term Trend Lines

To kick things off, let’s take stock of every US rider slated to race in the WorldTour in 2025 (listed in order of their PCS points gained in the 2024 season):

Riders From the USA In the 2025 WorldTour:
1) Matteo Jorgenson: Visma Lease a Bike (1,466pts)
2) Brandon McNulty: UAE (1,373pts)
3) Magnus Sheffield: Ineos (634pts)
4) Kevin Vermaerke: Picnic PostNL (622pts)
5) Neilson Powless: EF-Education -EasyPost (578pts)
6) Luke Lamperti: SoudalQuickStep (486pts)
7) Sepp Kuss: Visma Lease a Bike (479pts)
8) Quinn Simmons: Lidl-Trek (269pts)
9) Will Barta: Movistar (191pts)
10) Sean Quinn: EF-Education -EasyPost (87pts)
11) Andrew (AJ) August: Ineos (40pts)
12) Artem Shmidt: Ineos (22pts)

• The top line number of 12 is down from 13 in 2024 due to losing two riders, Lawson Craddock, to retirement and Larry Warbasse to the sport’s second division (where he joins three other American riders) and only adding a single new rider, the 20-year-old Artem Shmidt, who comes up to the WorldTour from the Hagens Berman-Jayco development team.

  • Even with a healthy stream of young riders coming in, the number of Americans in the WorldTour is still significantly down from the numbers seen prior to the 2021 season and is once again the lowest count since 2008, while the trendline is still down over the last decade.

    • For example, in 2011, 29 Americans were signed to top-tier teams, but the number has decreased nearly every season, and in 2025, it is down a whopping 58% from this high water mark.

      • It is worth noting that these numbers are ever-so-slightly depressed due to one of the sport’s top second-division teams, Israel-Premier Tech, having two WT-caliber young Americans on staff, Matthew Riccitello and Riley Sheehan and veteran Larry Warbasse transferring from first-division Decathlon-AG2R to second-division, but very well-funded, Tudor Pro Cycling.

Next, let’s take a look at wins at the top two tiers of professional races (WorldTour & .Pro) by US riders over the same timeframe.

• We can see a similar downward trendline, but, just like the number of American riders in the WorldTour, there has been a recent uptick in quantity, driven by Sepp Kuss’ 2023 overall Vuelta a España win, Brandon McNulty’s collection of 2024 double WorldTour wins and Matteo Jorgenson’s emergence as a potential future star by winning Dwars door Vlaanderen and the Paris-Nice overall victory in 2024.

• It is worth noting that the non-WT .pro win figures and, in turn, the combined win totals before 2020 are slightly skewed upwards due to the presence of now-defunct US-based pro races like the Tour of California, Tour of Utah, and Colorado Classic, which gave American riders a chance to rack up wins on home soil.

Without a Flagship Team, American Riders Are Spread Thin Across Top-Flight Programs

While the number of riders and total high-quality win numbers is useful to understanding where US riders stand in the grand scheme of things, if we peel back a layer, we can see an extremely important data point that helps explain both the decreasing number of US riders and results in top races from those riders. This is the increasing number of teams the US riders are spread amongst.

For example, in 2010, there were 21 US riders on three WorldTour teams, meaning there were 7 US riders per WT team with at least one US rider. Flash forward to 2025, and there are 12 US riders spread over 8 WT teams, which means an average of 1.5 US riders per WT team has at least one US rider.

• The general trend of the dilution of US riders tells us that the main reason for plunging US representation at the top level of the sport isn’t due to a decreasing level of quality in the US rider pool but more due to the significant decline of US-based teams, which signed US-based riders for the sake of sponsorship reasons.

  • However, the recent uptick in concentration score is due to American riders massing together on a single team, oddly, a team that was formerly a symbol of British might, the Ineos-Grenadiers.

• This diaspora of American riders has the effect of giving US riders fewer chances to ride for themselves and net wins. Instead of a few teams consolidating the country’s top stars onto a single team to highlight their talents, global superteams hire them away to bolster domestique support for their superstar riders.

  • For example, as I’ve said in years past, American riders don’t benefit from the ‘Mas Effect.’

    • This allows a rider like Enric Mas to be currently worth more to Movistar as a team leader whose main goal is to highlight riders from Spanish-language markets (where the Movistar company wants to grow its telecom business) than as a domestique on a team like Visma or UAE, even though his quality is on par with, or perhaps even below, some of those teams’ support riders.

      • So, without the presence of teams like Movistar, Mas’ market rate as a leader/featured rider would plummet, meaning he would have to market himself to a bigger team as a helper to command a high salary.

• This dynamic also means the ‘quality bar’ US riders are forced to clear to make it into the WorldTour is much higher than in the past since the concept of a team picking up three non-result-generating US riders to satisfy a sponsor is not as important as it used to be, even if major bike brands looking to sell units in America become critical partners to their sponsored teams, and major European firms with a presence in the US, like Lidl, enter the fray.

  • Although there are technically two US-registered teams in the WorldTour (EF Education First-EasyPost and Lidl-Trek), EF’s parent company is based in Switzerland, and Trek’s main title sponsor, Lidl, is German, and both teams embrace a very wide-net recruitment policy that keeps riders from one specific country pooling on the team.

  • This means the US riders are far more disadvantaged than another similar ‘outsider’ country, Australia, which has done a great job of producing world-class riders despite a small population and niche cycling culture standpoint but has built up its own Aussie-focused WorldTour team (Jayco) that gives local riders platform to Europe (e.g. Kelland O'Brien), a port in a mid-career storm (e.g. Caleb Ewan) and gives high-upside riders years to race as a leader without delivering big wins (e.g. Luke Plapp).

Average American Rider Quality Has Never Been Higher & Is Rising

There is perhaps no better metric for the quality bar American riders are forced to clear to reach the top than the Pro Cycling Stats points per US rider.

• While the trendline has held steady since 2009, the number of PCS points per US rider in the WorldTour surged over the past two seasons, making it the only major metric that has increased, or even just remained unchanged, over the past 15 seasons for US riders.

• In fact, the 520 PCS points per US WorldTour rider in 2024 are over twice as many as the 217 PCS points per US rider in 2018, when American riders won more races (15) in the top two tiers of professional races than at any other point since 2009.

  • This metric confirms what any casual observer of US riders would have suspected; while their raw numbers in the top-flight haven’t been increasing, their quality per rider is significantly higher than in the past, potentially even at an all-time high.

The Path to Team Leadership Still Exists Despite The Lack of a True American Team

While I have worried in years past that the lack of true American-run and sponsored teams is limiting the career paths of even the most talented American riders, I have almost completely changed my mind on this issue heading into 2025.

• After the recent GC successes of Sepp Kuss (2023 Vuelta) and Matteo Jorgenson (2024 Paris-Nice) at the incredibly deep Visma-Lease a Bike team, it is clear that if Americans are talented and focused enough, they can find a leadership space on foreign teams.

  • And, with Visma looking to implement Jorgenson as a leader in both one-day and stage races in 2025 and beyond as their other non-Wout van Aert/Jonas Vingegaard leaders age out of their primes, his path to stardom appears wide open.

• Brandon McNulty, currently on a UAE team with a seemingly endless conveyor belt of young talent, has struggled at times to carve out space on the start lists at the sport’s biggest races, but when given the chance, he delivers at an impressive rate.

  • In 2024, despite not making the UAE Tour de France squad, he won nine races and finished inside the top ten in the pro victory ranking.

    • And, with his skillset perfectly matched with the type of support Tadej Pogačar will need at the 2025 Tour de France, he has a great chance of getting back to the start line at the sport’s biggest race.

• Ironically, the American talent that appears most buried on his team’s depth chart is Neilson Powless at the (somewhat) American EF Education-EasyPost team. While the 28-year-old finished the season strong with two wins, he spent a good chunk of the 2024 season working in service of his teammate’s chances.

  • Adding to Powless’ difficulty carving out space at his team is that nearly a decade into his pro career, it still isn’t completely clear what race type he is best served focusing on.

    • He has won difficult one-days (San Sebastian and Gran Piemonte), but in stage races, despite mild success finishing in the top ten in the GC at races like Paris-Nice and Tour de Suisse, he isn’t a consistent and viable GC threat.

The Wave of Young American Talent Is at a Critical Juncture

Behind this collection of riders in the midst of their prime, there is a steady stream of young American talents at the pointy end of the sport, like Quinn Simmons (23), Magnus Sheffield (22), Luke Lamperti (22), Artem Shmidt (20) and AJ August (19). And, due to more young Americans forging themselves in the much hotter fires of European racing, we should expect the level of talent amongst the Americans to increase over the coming years and that they will be capable of winning the sport’s biggest races at a regular interval.

• In part, the collapse of the US-based cycling scene means that talented youngsters have no choice other than to get to Europe to develop as racers as young as possible, which means the decline of the professional racing scene in the US could actually act to increase the level of US talent at the top of the sport.

• One thing to note is that while this current group of riders had strong results throughout the season, like Simmons' ride at the 2024 World Championships and Magnus Sheffield’s sixth place at the 2024 Tour of Flanders, they are entering critical points in their careers. They may all be young and technically have plenty of time to develop, but the difference between riders who become consistent winners and high-quality career journeymen is often the mindset forged in the delicate first few years of their careers.

  • Sheffield, Shmidt, and August are particularly interesting because they are all major talents on a well-resourced team that will offer numerous leadership opportunities. However, on the flip side, other young riders in the Ineos program have somewhat oddly failed to develop and improve from the level they were at when they entered the team.

    • This is something to watch in the coming seasons as these riders enter the most important parts of their careers.

While it remains to be seen if all of this talent converts into US riders consistently challenging at major races, this small but elite group of riders showcases an impressive level of talent, pointing to an encouraging, if not slightly complex, outlook for U.S. competitive cycling. It also tells us that after a large chunk of fallow years, the country’s competitive standing at the sport’s best races is finally trending in the right direction, even with (or perhaps because of) the disintegration of the road racing scene back at home.